How To Play Captured Video From Microsoft Surface to Xbox 360

The other day I took some sample videos on my Surface RT. Needless to say, the quality of the video and audio aren’t very good, but then I wanted to stream them to my HDTV by way of my Xbox 360. It’s not as straight-forward as you’d think though. Here’s how to do it.

Take a Video or Picture with Surface RT

To capture videos or pictures on your Surface RT, tap the Camera app from the Start screen.

Then you can select either the front or rear camera to take your video by taping the Change Camera button. Tap the Video Mode button.

Now tap anywhere on the screen to start recording, and a timer will start in the lower left corner of the screen. To stop recording, simply tap anywhere on the screen again.

Stream Captured Video to HDTV via Xbox 360

Now that you have your video recorded, you can play it back in the Camera app. You’d think you can then just bring up the Charms Bar, click Devices, and select your Xbox 360. Just like using the Play To feature in other Windows 8 apps. But instead, you’re greeted with the following message telling you there’s no devices to receive the content. Even though you have your Xbox turned on and ready to receive the video.

So instead, you need to open the Photos app and go to Pictures Library > Camera Roll, then find the video you want to stream. Then tap the video to play it on the Surface.

Now you can bring up the Charms bar, Devices, and your Xbox 360 will be available to stream the video to – just tap it.

On the Surface you’ll get a message that the video is playing to Xbox 360.

Another way to do it is go into Desktop Mode, open you Camera Roll in the Photos folder, right click the video, and selectPlay To > Xbox 360.

It’s a bit confusing at first, but once you do it a couple of times it’s easy. But that doesn’t mean it makes sense. I would like to see photos you take with the Camera app be placed in your Camera Roll. Then if you take videos with the camera, have them placed in your Videos folder. Or better yet, enable the Camera app to stream videos to your Xbox 360.